Andrew Neather

As an anti-booze message, it’s a good deal more draconian than Michael Eavis’s gentle warning this week to Glastonbury-goers (don’t bring so much drink that you need a wheelbarrow to carry it): the French government is being urged to ban all online “promotion” of alcohol. It’s a very silly suggestion — though it does suggest the depth of France’s confusion over booze.

By examining public health data from around the world Stuckler and Basu show that it is not recession or even joblessness that makes people sicker but the offical response to austerity. It's hard therefore to avoid the conclusion that Osborne and Cameron's hairshirt is largely ideological

It was only to be expected that Margaret Thatcher’s death would set Twitter ablaze within minutes of its announcement. And the row shows no sign of abating, as tweeps rant, scores every minute, about the cost of the funeral, “Ding dong the witch is dead” reaching Number 2 in the iTunes download chart, and whether the Left are being disrespectful.

For a situation generally agreed to be a crisis, there are few convincing solutions around for London's housing problem. London Councils says the last census suggests we need to build 40,000 houses a year in the capital. At present we’re managing barely half that.